Oxford University Press

This book has five parts. In part I I give some background on the history and content of four subject areas that are fundamental to the study of complex systems: information, computation, dynamics and chaos, and evolution. In parts II–IV I describe how these four areas are being woven together in the science of complexity. I describe how life and evolution can be mimicked in computers, and conversely how the notion of computation itself is being imported to explain the behavior of natural systems. I explore the new science of networks and how it is discovering deep commonalities among systems as disparate as social communities, the Internet, epidemics, and metabolic systems in organisms. I describe several examples of how complexity can be measured in nature, how it is changing our view of living systems, and how this new view might inform the design of intelligent machines. I look at prospects of computer modeling of complex systems, as well as the perils of such models. Finally, in the last part I take on the larger question of the search for general principles in the sciences of complexity.

part one Background and History

• chapter one What Is Complexity? 3
• chapter two Dynamics, Chaos, and Prediction 15
• chapter three Information 40
• chapter four Computation 56
• chapter five Evolution 71
• chapter six Genetics, Simplified 88
• chapter seven Defining and Measuring Complexity 94

part two Life and Evolution in Computers

• chapter eight Self-Reproducing Computer Programs 115
• chapter nine Genetic Algorithms 127

part three Computation Writ Large

• chapter ten Cellular Automata, Life, and the Universe 145
• chapter eleven Computing with Particles 160
• chapter twelve Information Processing in Living Systems 169
• chapter thirteen How to Make Analogies (if You Are a Computer) 186
• chapter fourteen Prospects of Computer Modeling 209

part four Network Thinking

• chapter fifteen The Science of Networks 227
• chapter sixteen Applying Network Science to Real-World Networks 247
• chapter seventeen The Mystery of Scaling 258
• chapter eighteen Evolution, Complexified 273

part five Conclusion

• chapter nineteen The Past and Future of the Sciences of Complexity 291